Rainfall

Rainfall totals were close to normal for much of the state in August. The exceptions were parts of the south that observed a very much drier than usual month and parts of Gippsland that where very much wetter than normal. The wettest station overall with 178.8 mm was Reeves Knob which also recorded the wettest single day on the 11th with 137.4 mm. Some stations had their lowest total August rainfall on record whilst others had their highest August daily rainfall on record.
There is a map of rainfall deciles below.

Temperature

Maximum temperature

Preliminary data indicates that Victoria recorded its 3rd warmest average maximum temperatures for August in 2011. A warm spell at the start of the month was particularly unusual and is described in Special Climate Statement 34: An unseasonable warm spell affecting Victoria in early August 2011 .Parts of the South West, North East and Central forecast districts observed their warmest average maximum temperatures for August on record. The Mallee and North Central forecast districts recorded average maximum temperatures that were very much warmer than usual. The rest of the state observed warmer than usual average daytime temperatures with a majority of stations reporting average maximum temperatures between 1.0 °C and 2.0 °C warmer than usual. The hottest day was the 4th when Mildura Airport recorded 27.9 °C. Mildura Airport also recorded the warmest days on average with 19.4 °C. Mount Hotham recorded the coolest days on average with 3.0 °C along with the coldest day of the month on the 9th with -2.1 °C. Some sites had their highest August temperature on record
whilst others had their highest August mean daily maximum temperature on record.
There is a map of maximum temperature anomalies below.

Minimum temperature

Patches of highest on record average minimum temperature were recorded in the Mallee and South West forecast districts. East Gippsland and the Wimmera forecast district's average minimum temperatures were very much warmer than usual. Average minimum temperatures across the rest of the state were generally close to normal for August. The coldest night was the 27th when Mount Buller recorded -7.7 °C. The coolest nights on average were at Mount Hotham with -1.5 °C and the warmest nights on average were at Wilsons Promontory Lighthouse with 10.3 °C. The warmest night was the 5th when Point Hicks (Lighthouse) recorded 17.5 °C. Some stations had their warmest August night (highest daily minimum temperature) on record whilst others had their highest August mean daily minimum temperature on record.
There is a map of minimum temperature anomalies below.

Notes

A Monthly Climate Summary is prepared to list the main features of the weather in Victoria using the most timely and accurate information available on the date of publication; it will generally not be updated. Later information, including data that has had greater opportunity for quality control, will be presented in the Monthly Weather Review, usually published in the fourth week of the month.

This statement has been prepared based on information available at
12 pm on Thursday 1 September 2011.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change
as new information becomes available.

Averages are long-term means based on observations from
all available years of record, which vary widely from site to site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 10 years of record, as they cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of long-term average rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares with the climate record for the site,
based on the
decile ranking
(very low rainfall is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3,
average in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9
and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of average shows how much rain has fallen this time as a
percentage of the long-term mean.